My son wanted to go to the Singapore Zoo. My better half and I were quite reluctant as we have been there quite a number of times already. The white tiger attack on one of the zookeepers too We have seen the day version and the night version (night safari) over the last few years. But on Thursday, I was reading the newspaper and saw the Singapore Zoo's advertisement advertising their latest exhibit the "Rainforest Kidzworld".
So off we went yesterday morning and I think we were not the only ones who read that advert. Half of Singapore was there and the queue to get the entrance tickets when we got there was about three hundred meters long. It was that long and it took us quite a while just to get to the end of it. But the good thing is that even though the queue was long, it moved very fast. The zoo had six counters and it took us around 25 minutes to get the tickets. Even then when we were queueing, the assistants took our ticket preferences and by the time we got to the counters, we just gave the lady the small piece of paper thus saving lots of time.
The new exhibit has nothing much to do with animals. The main exhibit was a splashy area full of water, the rides around it are a carousel, pony rides, animal farm plus a few other fun things like the flying fox etc. That in itself is already good enough to attract kids like bees to the honey. By the time we left, we could have counted all the animals we actually saw in the zoo. Most of the visit was taken up visiting the new exhibits.
This is what gets me. We went to the zoo not to visit animals but to do something else altogether. In fact we did not even want to go to the zoo but was attracted to the zoo because it changed itself - adapting to the needs of the children while at the same time keeping to the theme of zoo keeping. The crowd management was good and even the trams when full kept on coming thus our tram queue was no longer than about 10 minutes. I guess there are many lessons here for us.
My son wanted to go to the Singapore Zoo. My better half and I were quite reluctant as we have been there quite a number of times already. The white tiger attack on one of the zookeepers too We have seen the day version and the night version (night safari) over the last few years. But on Thursday, I was reading the newspaper and saw the Singapore Zoo's advertisement advertising their latest exhibit the "Rainforest Kidzworld".
So off we went yesterday morning and I think we were not the only ones who read that advert. Half of Singapore was there and the queue to get the entrance tickets when we got there was about three hundred meters long. It was that long and it took us quite a while just to get to the end of it. But the good thing is that even though the queue was long, it moved very fast. The zoo had six counters and it took us around 25 minutes to get the tickets. Even then when we were queueing, the assistants took our ticket preferences and by the time we got to the counters, we just gave the lady the small piece of paper thus saving lots of time.
The new exhibit has nothing much to do with animals. The main exhibit was a splashy area full of water, the rides around it are a carousel, pony rides, animal farm plus a few other fun things like the flying fox etc. That in itself is already good enough to attract kids like bees to the honey. By the time we left, we could have counted all the animals we actually saw in the zoo. Most of the visit was taken up visiting the new exhibits.
This is what gets me. We went to the zoo not to visit animals but to do something else altogether. In fact we did not even want to go to the zoo but was attracted to the zoo because it changed itself - adapting to the needs of the children while at the same time keeping to the theme of zoo keeping. The crowd management was good and even the trams when full kept on coming thus our tram queue was no longer than about 10 minutes. I guess there are many lessons here for us.
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